About

At the first ever iteration of the band, we had a drummer with no drums, a guitarist who loved Sepultura and Metallica, a bass player who had only just bought a bass guitar and me, a classical pianist who loved Erasure and wanted to be Vince Clarke. We had no vocalist and I made everyone play Erasure covers against their will. Needless to say, this 1991 incarnation didn't last beyond three rehearsals.

In 1992, me and the Metallica fan, Chris, got together inviting random people to join us. This is where we wrote the first version of 'Urban Fox' (then called 'World War 3') and 'Too Late' among other bits of music. Chris sang a bit but we never got near recording anything we were doing. Later in 1992, I got together with Doug and Darren who had written a song together called 'Without You' and added a keyboard part. It didn't sound like Erasure. Doug was the first vocalist we'd ever had so I brought along some songs I'd been working on using some lyrics he'd given me. One of which was 'Neon City' which we recorded a demo of using a cassette radio with built in microphone. After a few of these get-togethers, we'd recorded 'Urban Fox', 'Without You' and 'Neon City' along with some 'The Time' covers, 'Jerk Out' and 'Blondie' in 1993.

Then everyone left for University and it would be the last we saw of Darren. Doug and Ian had supplied me with many lyrical drafts and ideas so, in readiness for the next get-together, I started writing pieces of songs, a chorus here a riff there - which eventually became almost fully formed songs. I started collecting these demos, using my voice on them as a guide for Doug when we got together again to hammer the better ideas into shape. A year passed and we hardly managed any rehearsal time together, but I had a tape of around 20 song ideas to share.  In October of 1994, I copied the tape of demos, sent it off to the other members of the band and before 1994 was out, I had another tape with another ten demos of songs to share.

Almost facetiously, I called the first collection 'Fear' and the second collection 'Fear II'. As I continued to write and record new demos, it soon dawned on me that the only way to collect these, catalogue these and contain them within the context of theme, content and inspiration was to collect them on tapes and class them as 'Albums'.  Not at first, I just called the collections 'album-type' names but didn't put any thought into them beyond whatever songs I was coming up with being recorded onto tape in the order I'd come up with them. It wasn't until 'Intermezzo' in September 1995 that I started to think about running orders and themes.

About 100 demos were recorded in 1995 across six 'albums'. Eventually, we played gigs, we did some studio time and sent off countless demo tapes but it soon became clear we were a hobby band - a pet project - a group who just wanted to write music, write lyrics, write songs and have fun doing it.

I came to regard the period between 1994 (the first collection of songs) and 2010 as one where just recorded demos. only when home studios came in a box was I able to start writing and recording songs to a quality I regarded palatable for a wider audience. With EQ, compression, midi instruments, quantising, de-essers, stackable plug-in effects and direct track audio editing, the audio quality and song structuring capabilities were limitless. This, really, was the start of Urban Fox as an 'artist'. The rise of SoundCloud, Overplay and distribution to streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music meant we could now reach an audience without being 'signed'.

We wrote 'Light is a Feather' which sounded box-fresh and crisp. It was punchy. It had melodies. It had clarity. The bass and synths were separate in the mix. It freed us as creatives and allowed us to share our music with people who liked what we were doing - which only made us want to make more.

2024 marks the 30th anniversary of 'Fear' (the album that wasn't supposed to be an album) and recently, we've been producing collections called 'Re-imagined'. You can find Volume 1 here ; the essence of these albums is to go back to the demo period (1994 - 2010) and record the better demos as fully formed actual songs. The original hissy analogue toy-synth versions of these songs can be found here ; the Re-imagined collections aim to re-record these songs, not note for note, but to make them sound like we'd written them today.

All our albums (the better ones at least) are on our BandCamp page here if you want to keep up to date with new music, and new old music. Another project we hope to have completed by October 2024 is 'Fear (Re-imagined)'; as its the 30th anniversary, we felt it only appropriate to go back and revisit the first ever demos we recorded and bring them bang up to date. I've kept in touch with a lot of these songs over the years but these re-imaginings really feel like I'm having conversations with old friends I haven't appreciated as much as I should have over the years. It also feels like saying goodbye - hoping to make these versions good enough that I'll never have to contact these songs ever again - they'll be the perfect versions. Then I can move on. Write new songs. Make new acquaintances. Move into a new future for Urban Fox.

Albums